Please Paramount, Give Us The Volleyball Scene

Why is it so damn hard to find The Volleyball Scene from "Top Gun" on Youtube?  There are parodies and foreign language versions, videotaped copies and oh-so-funny dubbed versions.  But just the scene in all its sweaty glory? You all know what scene I'm talking about.  Jeans no shirts, aviator glasses, volleyball gloves, flexing and dives. So far as I can tell, it ain't there.

Copyright issues? Whatevs, Paramount. We have to help our friends through needle biopsies here.

Here's the thing, how can I be as young as I am (and I am crazy young mind you), and have three of the, say, six women I consider to be my closest friends, have been through needle biopsies?  One of the three had a lumpectomy.  And thankfully, they have all been benign.  I definitely am on board with the whole it's-better-to-be-safe-than-sorry thing. Catch it early. Wipe it out. But it seems to me, and I'm not the doctor in this house, that new imaging devices are able to see miniscule things in our bodies, but clumsy old human eyes, even very well-trained doctory ones, aren't able to tell what those things are without poking holes in our boobs with knitting needles.  Either the devices have to get even better.  Or the doctors need to figure out how to interpret these pictures a little better.

But that's not even really what I'm on about.  What I'm on about is that in the meantime, the patient care, the real business of counseling women who make the move from the routine mammo to diagnostic mammo and beyond-- well the docs haven't quite figured out how to do that part either.  I spent four hours in a very well-respected doctor's office last Fall, apparently completely forgotten about, going through mammogram, wait, ultrasound, wait, repeat mammogram, wait...  It was an absolutely excruciating four hours.  And during the time I waited in my little robe in the magazine room, not one person came to explain what was going on.  No one told me what the docs were looking at.  Or concerned about.  Or not to worry.  Or even how much was reasonable to worry.  I swear, at one point a nurse or tech or someone actually came in, saw me alone in the waiting room, and said "you're still here!?" I kid you not.  I was alone, essentially crying on the ultrasound table, with no one to talk to.   Texting my husband like a crazy person.  My little crisis ended four hours later with a paper that read "normal mammogram. probably benign ultrasound come back in six months possible cystic changes." What the wha?  I am fairly certain that means I'm okay.  Doc Hubby agreed.  Still even the interpretation of that mysterious piece of paper was lacking.  But at that point I was so desperate to leave...and late for a Kindergarten visit that when I showed up at the doctor's office four hours earlier I hadn't even dreamed I could possibly miss...that I didn't have it in me to ask more questions.  I have the comfort of going home to a physician.  I'm lucky that way.

The friend for whom I was desperately seeking Tom Cruise, has just completed that particular journey of anxiety that is becoming all to familiar as I watch friend after friend slog through it.  Hers started on MLK day, over two weeks ago.  Routine mammo.  Follow up call for a diagnostic mammo scheduled in...a week.  Week one of worry.  Degree of worry on a scale of 1 - 10?  Say 4. Diagnostic mammo results in needle biopsy scheduled in...a week.  Week two of worry.  Degree of worry on a scale of 1 - 10?  After spending four hours googling all possible outcomes? Say 8. Needle biopsy on a Monday.  Results back on Wednesday. Two more days of worry.  Degree of worry on a scale of 1 - 10?  When you throw in steri-strips and throbbing? Oh, around 11. 

Results today, negative.  Collective sigh of relief.

In what universe is it okay for all of that to take 2 and 1/2 weeks?  In the brilliant article by physician turned patient Colleen B. Fogarty "Call it 'Jiffy Boob', What's Lacking When Care Has Assembly-Line Efficiency," at least the author was able to have her needle biopsy immediately.  Why is this not par for the course?  But Fogarty's concerns are valid. Where is the mental health counseling?  If breast cancer detection is turning into an anxiety-creating machine, where is the counter-balancing human kindness?  I know there's no way of eliminating the anxiety completely. Results can't be instant.  But when routine turns scary, it's scary. Every hushed conversation overheard by nurses is interpreted as a sign.  Every mumbled discussion of what a radiologist has for lunch is a possible discussion of your condition.  Can they tell?  Do they already know? And when that ultrasound tech was smashing my poor cysty breasts over and over again, couldn't she say, "Just because I'm doing this so much, doesn't mean it's cancer. I need to give the radiologist a good picture because if I don't she will yell at me and I've had quite enough of that this week."

So, to Tom Cruise. It is up to us, then to be those people for each other.  When my boobs were aching, I went to my friends who had already been through this, for support.  And this past week, I decided to offer my friend a smile a day while she was going through her nightmare of waiting.  I sent her ecards and funny videos.  And when I wanted to send her the link to the Volleyball Scene on YouTube, or anywhere online really, I COULDN'T FIND IT!!!!  I mean, when you want to see Slider flex, you want to see Slider flex, am I right?

So listen, ye who hold the keys to the "Top Gun" kingdom.  For all us 40-somethings out there, who came of age to the Volley Ball Scene and then rented it at a video store you had to drive to, and wore out our parents' VCRs watching it over and over and over again while snacking on Cool Ranch Doritos and drinking Diet Coke...we who are now getting our tatas squished and poked and punctured, 80 percent of the time for absolutely no reason but to make us crazy with worry, is it too much to ask that you throw us a bone? For the love of God, put that heart-pounding, sand-spewing, orgy of sweat and shades on YouTube in a clear as crystal version. For us. Cuz we're sittin' squarely in the danger zone. And we need to have our breath, and our worries, taken away.

Get Well Soon

So...I have two get well cards to send. One was sitting out on my desk. A lovely glittery flowery but yet totally tasteful beautiful thing. I am sending it to my dear friend's aunt who is having surgery. Fine.

So Doc Hubby comes home after work yesterday and I hear Bean whisper to her Daddy and he says "That's such a good idea." And she says "But let's keep it a secret." And he says "Ok." Christmas is coming, I think. How cute.

Cut to bath time, Bean is being a slowpoke about getting into the tub. She is naked. Running around. I look on my desk and the card is gone. "Where's my card?" I say. Bean mutters something. The kid likes sparkly things. She is such a girl.  "I need that card, where is it?" I demand. And somehow thorough the kerfuffle I get the sense that Bean has hidden it under the chair in her room.  I am late in sending out this card. I need the card. I look under the chair, and it isn't there. She isn't getting in the tub.  I'm getting impatient.  "Who are you sending it to?" Bean asks. "Bean, I need that card, it's a get well card, please get it for me." "But who are you sending it to?!" And I snap. "BEAN! GET ME THAT CARD NOW!"

And she bursts into tears. Takes her little naked self into the bedroom and reaches under her big girl bed and pulls out the card. "But I wanted to give it to you for Mother's Daaaaaaaaaaay!" She wails.

I look at Doc Hubby. Really? Really you couldn't have helped me out of this one?

"I need it to send to Ben's Aunt Sandy," I say.

"But I wanted to save it for you for Mother's Daaaaaaaaaaay."

It is a really pretty card. Day 1365 of my reign as Worst Mother In the World.

Opening Night

If you're around New Haven come and see our show. It's pretty beautiful.

Keeping Up With the Kids These Days

So lately my friend Rebecca is all on about how when people in their teens and twenties see us now, they think "that lady."  Like, "look at that lady trying to get her umbrella turned right side out" or "look at that lady trying to push a stroller and hold an umbrella at the same time" or "look at that lady bleeding from the eye after she poked herself with an umbrella."  That lady.  "Is that lady really trying to make money rapping on the F train?"

I don't feel like "that lady." 

But since the young guy in our play who graduated from my college in 2006, asked if there are any teachers there now who were also teaching when I was there, as if my college career was about a million years ago...and then I did the math and drew some parallels and realized that to him, I'm like some lady who graduated in 1976 and god knows those people are ancient. Since then I've made a more concerted effort to keep up with the kids these days.

So while we spend hours in the Green Room waiting to practice our play, we have been catching up on the youtube videos that the kids are watching.  All of them are, like, so 2010, but to us ladies and gents they are new.  And if you want to be hip, and not reveal your "lady" stripes, watch these.  Plus they are funny.

Can't Hug Every Cat



Okay so I totally knew this girl was an actress the first time I saw it...in the guys dressing room where all the guys were watching it.  The guys all insist that this is real. The song is based on an eharmony video and it's so totally fake.  But still funny. 

Antoine Dodson Bed Intruder Song



So all the students working our show are all, yeah that was so funny two years ago. Well, it's new to most of us in the cast. My friend T.R. has purchased it on iTunes. Apparently all the money that people spend on the iTunes version of the song goes to the Dodson family. Hopefully they don't live somewhere that you need to hide your kids, wife, and husbands now.

and finally, The Gay Weatherman

Speaks for itself, don't you think.

So all you ladies out there, you're welcome.

An Old Pair of Slippers

So I went away to work again.  Beautiful New Haven, CT.

Actually, it is pretty beautiful.  The university is gorgeous.  During the beautiful days last week I walked through the campus and felt homesick for my little college on the hill.  For the familiarity it used to offer.  Every year in the fall I feel like I should be going back.  I wonder how long that will last?

Now it's raining.  The remnants of some other hurricane.  This one with a non-gender-specific name I think.  I'm in my very spacious and light filled apartment watching "Ghost Hunters" (total coincidence, I swear.  I actually don't think I've watched Ghost Hunters in weeks).  It's raining and I'm homesick for my actual home.  Bean is doing a puddle walk with our wonderful babysitter.   I'm about to go and get some new slippers for the third act.

Doing the play again after three months feels a bit like putting on a pair of well-worn slippers.  Or better, like putting on a favorite pair of jeans after the summer.  Just having something covering your legs feels kind of weird.  And kind of comforting.  And the shirt you wore with it last Spring isn't quite right.  And you need to rethink that belt.  But it's familiar.  Welcome.  Some rehearsals it feels like we did our last performance in Berkeley 45 minutes ago, and other days it feels like we never did it at all.  The play remains so inscrutable in so many ways.  Moments that I finally just took a deep breath and swam through, trusting they'd make some kind of sense...those moments can be reexamined.  Should be reexamined.  Are excruciating to reexamine.

And so I gotta go try on those slippers.

Because I Even Brought Up Ghosts

I'm obsessed with "Ghost Hunters" but that's another post.  Except I think I need to call Jason and Grant.  The day after The Pink Hairband Incident I entered the Bean's bathroom.

And there.

In the bottom of the toilet.

I saw the ghost of her pink hairband.

Or the pink hairband itself.

It just won't die-e-e-e-e-e-e-e!

Either way I reflushed that possessed hairband again faster than you can say ectoplasmic manifestation.  No way I'm fishing that nasty thing out and running it through the delicate cycle.

And the Pink Hairband hasn't been seen since.

It's Never About the Hairband

So, Bean and I are spending a lot of time together these days. A lot.  I planned this summer of much time together mostly to assuage my guilt for having been out of town for three months.  Pretty sure Bean has completely forgotten I was gone.  I'm left trying to be a one-woman-summer-camp for three months.

Today we had ballet in the morning and a playdate in the afternoon (still hate that term with the white hot heat of a thousand playground slides--can't we come up with something better? Play appointment? Play coffee?).  My apologies again, NYC parks service. The kids were just planting those blueberries. I realize you will no doubt need to close that section of lawn and reseed.  I will provide the chicken wire.

So by the time we got home, Bean was good and muddy.  Sent her directly in to the bathroom for a shower. She had to go potty first.  Can't remember if she flushed or I did (come on, it was me, of course) but just as I flushed, I also reached down to remove her pink squishy ponytail holder.  And like something out of a movie, it flew out of my hand like a rubber band shot by a ten year old boy, and landed square in the toilet just as the final swirl was circling around the bowl. And gurgle slurp glug glug glug.  It was gone.

I started to laugh.  Insane timing. No possible chance to fish that thing out.

Bean promptly lost it.  Inconsolable, snotty, naked sobbing for about forty minutes.

Did I mention the hair band came from a pack of identical hair bands? She has five more EXACTLY like the one that went down the crapper, in the plastic befeathered carrying bag.  Along with about 40 others in various other pleasing colors.

"But this was my most SPECIAL hairband!!!" naked sob sob snot wipe sob "Can't you call someone to get it back?"

"Well, who could I call, honey.  It went down into the sewer with all the poopy.  You wouldn't want it back now anyway. And we have lots more."

"But what will it do down there?  It will be LONELY!"

sob sob snot.  still naked.

lame comforting from me while I lay on her boppy and try not to fall asleep.

Bean looks up at me with big bluey hazely teary eyes.

"Can't we call the firemen?"

Of course, this isn't about hairbands right? It's never about the hairband. Just like Doc Hubby and I are never really fighting about the dishes.  It's about loss and things going away and never coming back and her dawning realization that life itself implies death and the horrible moment a few days ago when she looked at me and said "Mama I don't want to die." My grandfather and possibly ghosts and you know.

So I said to her, "Are you feeling sad about things getting lost?  Other things that are gone forever?"

And she wiped her snot on her towel and sobbed angrily, "Nooooo! I am just very sad about my very special hairband!"

Make note to discuss with non-slacker mothers who actually read about parenting during the Bean's next playsummit.